


The Pride of a Mandalorian

by Lady_Vibeke



Series: A Thin Red Line Between Stubborn Spirits [10]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: (because these two just can't keep it in their pants), Bounty Hunters, Din Djarin is a Proud Dad, Domestic Bliss, F/M, Family Fluff, Gen, Love, Mandalorian Armour Painting, Real Men Wear Flowers, Sexy Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24181102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Vibeke/pseuds/Lady_Vibeke
Summary: Din is proud of his armour – no more a clean slate, a blank page with no history; he carries his whole world on it and wears it like a crown. Around the galaxy, people started calling himCyare Verd,the Beloved Warrior. It started off as a derisive moniker which over the years, as Din's fame as a hunter grew, ended up shrouded with fear and respect. Nobody laughs at his colourful armour any more: if you have a bounty on your head and spot theCyare Verdin a crowd, you know your clock is ticking.[ The Mandalorian with colourful flowers and chubby little hands printed all over his armour gets back home to his family after a hunt. ]
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: A Thin Red Line Between Stubborn Spirits [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579576
Comments: 25
Kudos: 197





	The Pride of a Mandalorian

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up with this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone, so here it is.
> 
> Here's the Cyare Verd, courtesy of the amazing [Mandalorianess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mandalorianess/pseuds/Mandalorianess)  
>   
> 

"Mama! Vodi is trying to feed a bug to Tahti!"

Wiping her brow with the back of a hand, Cara gingerly looks up from the log she's just chopped to glance over at where the children are playing, just a few feet away.

Tahti has her little hands deep into the pile of sand she and Vodi are sitting on, building up lopsided mountains topped with leaves, flowers, and pebbles. Vodi has a huge yellow caterpillar writhing in his hands and is handing it out to little Tahti with an encouraging grin; Tahti, who is just learning to crawl, is trying to decide whether the risk of losing her wobbly balance to reach out for the small, funny thing her brother is offering is worth her while.

Cara smiles to herself. Next to her, Shari, arms full of chopped logs, is staring at her siblings with the dramatic stern look of an adult dealing with silly babies.

“Bean!” calls Cara. “That one's no good for you sister, you know that! You can have it, if you want, but Tahti can't eat it, honey.”

Vodi turns around and bends his head as if to ask _'Are you sure'?;_ when Cara just patiently stares back, he slowly retracts his hand out of Tahti's reach and pops the fat caterpillar into his own mouth and starts chewing with gusto, much to Tathi's bewilderment.

Cara can see that Tahti's little face is staring to shift into one of her _I'm-not-sure-if-I'm-supposed-to-cry-for-this-or-not_ expressions. She's about to drop her axe to go and pick her up, when a familiar shadow appears from the trees just behind the sand box: Tahti barely gets to hint a whine or two before she's lifted up into her father's arms.

“What's going on, here?” he asks softly, turning her around so that she can face him. “You guys eating bugs without me again?”

Tahti doesn't even need to see his face to brighten up at once. Cara can hear her giggle from afar even despite Shari's shrill shierk piercing her ear:

“Papa's home!”

In less than a blink, Din gets buried in a flurry of hugs and kisses from every angle. He falls to his knees to gather all three kids into his arms, then, pretending to stagger for a moment, stands up again and swirls them around, making them giggle in delight.

Cara can't help a big, warm grin. Din's armour glitters in the sunlight. _Literally_ glitters: Shari and Vodi personally picked the glittery paint at the market in Galactic City. Over the years, Din's beskar has become the children's favourite canvas: every time he gets back home from a hunt, the kids get their paint out and add new drawings in a corner of his armour; Tahti, who's still too young to hold a brush, has left several, chubby prints all over the shiny beskar, and it's a delight to see how much she's grown in these seven months after the first, tiny handprint was stamped upon the side of Din's helmet.

Cara takes in the colour madness scattered all over the formerly pristine silvery surface: flowers and stars, little hands, smiling faces, a particularly ugly rendition of Shoobie, their loth-cat... Cara's own hand left its mark on Din's chest-plate, just above his heart. It was the first print the armour ever got, immediately followed by Shari's and Vodi's and, later, Tahti's.

Din is proud of his armour – no more a clean slate, a blank page with no history; he carries his whole world on it and wears it like a crown. Around the galaxy, people started calling him _Cyare Verd,_ the Beloved Warrior. It started off as a derisive moniker which over the years, as Din's fame as a hunter grew, ended up shrouded with fear and respect. Nobody laughs at his colourful armour any more: if you have a bounty on your head and spot the _Cyare Verd_ in a crowd, you know your clock is ticking.

Cara enjoys hunting, too. Sometimes she goes on her own; other times she and Din leave the children with Auntie Kaunis and hunt together, occasionally stretching the missions by a couple of days for the mere pleasure of having the old Crest all for themselves.

Cara's armour has its own drawings, too, but not as many as Din's. Hers is smaller and she doesn't hunt as often as he does. Din himself hunts more for fun than real necessity: they have all they need, here on Beltas Dor, and a single bounty can keep them going for months.

After all the swirling and the laughing, Din drags himself across the grass towards Cara, Tahti and Vodi in his arms, Shari riding piggyback on his shoulders. She managed to steal his helmet, at some point, and slipped it onto her own head, and she now looks exactly like the big-headed brat she is.

“I've been assaulted,” groans Din while approaching with an exaggerated limp that makes Cara roll her eyes. The children's acute titters must be deafening him; even Tathi, who can barely understand what is going on, is infected by her siblings' mirth.

“Mama, look! Papa brought us presents!”

Shari jumps off her father's shoulders before he can let her down himself and runs to Cara to show her the three translucent rocks in her hands.

“They're tolk- tok- they're lucky stones!”

 _“Tokens._ They're beautiful,” says Cara, beaming up at Din, whose smile is, if possible, even brighter than her own. He looks shabbier than usual and a little tired, but the joy in his eyes is so intense it makes up for any physical exhaustion.

He eases Vodi to the ground, and he immediately scurries to his sister; together they hold up the gems into the sunlight to admire their iridescence. They're not very valuable items, but Cara knows they're going to treasure them along with all the other little memorabilia from their journeys across the galaxy.

“Hey.” Din leans forward, Tahti clutched to his chest, and kisses Cara's lips with a smile.

“Hey yourself,” she whispers. He's as sweaty as she is, and carries a vague scent of metal and dust. “You need a shower.”

Din breathes out a laugh.

“I do.”

“How was the hunt?”

“Easy.” Din seeks another kiss before replying, “Either criminals are getting lame, or I'm too good.”

“I think I know which one it is,” Cara chuckles.

Din wraps an arm around her waist and follows her toward the house. Tahti curls against his chest with a wide yawn.

“How have you four being doing?”

“Shari lost another tooth,” Cara conveys. “She wants to make a necklace with all the ones she loses.”

“That's disgusting,” Din laughs, and Cara shrugs.

“I told her. She doesn't care.”

She's not surprised when Din, grinning smugly, says:

“Good.”

“Vodi's learned to say _wata._ Which could mean _water_ or _want up,_ we haven't figured it out yet.”

“And what about our smallest bean?”

They stop right before the steps leading up to the porch. Din is gazing lovingly down at Tahti, who is slowly dozing off in his embrace. Cara will never tire of this sight, this big, battle-hardened man holding this beautiful, little thing they made with so much love and so much awe Cara's heart almost can't take it.

She raises a hand to brush it gently over the baby's head, hovering her fingertips over the light wisps of auburn hair that is already turning darker.

“This one's just like you: quiet and pensive. She misses you when you're away,” she mutters. “We all do,” she adds, looking up to meet his eyes to find the same, overwhelming love she could see in them years ago, when they were barely starting to acknowledge their feelings. “I couldn't keep them in their beds one single night for this whole week.”

Din's gaze drops guiltily.

“I'll never stay away this long again, I promise.”

Cara sighs softly. She cups his face to make him look up at her.

“We're okay,” she reassures. “As long as you come back to us.”

Din's hand comes up to rest upon hers, thick and rough with the layers of the glove and the gauntlet. His hair is messy and needs a cut; there is a bruise surfacing along his jaw, next to his chin; his eyes are warmer than the sun shining upon them.

“Always.”

He leans his forehead against Cara's and they just smile at each other. They kiss again, and again, and it feels both like he was away for years and never left at all. It always does.

They're still kissing when two overenthusiastic screeching brats come crashing into their legs.

“Papa! We need to paint you, now!” Shari announces, her voice coming out funny through the helmet modulator.

“How about you help me get out of my armour and then we paint all together?” Din suggests, looking down at Shari.

Next to her, Vodi holds his stubby arms out and says, “Waa... taa?”

Cara laughs. “We need to differentiate your vocabulary, buddy.”

She picks him up as Din takes Shari's hand.

“Okay, tribe, listen up,” says Cara as they walk into the house. “Papa is tired and dirty, so this is what we're gonna do: we help him out of his armour and let him shower, then we eat, and _then_ we do the painting. Alright?”

“O-kay,” Shari agrees with a firm nod. In Cara's arms, Vodi hesitantly does the same.

“I want to paint two suns,” Shari declares, counting _two_ on her fingers. “As round as Papa's bum!”

Both Cara and Din nearly choke on their own spit. They glance at each other, trying not to laugh. They don't need to ask who taught that to Shari: they are both very fond of each other's _bums_ and are prodigal with compliments whenever they think they're out of indiscreet ears' range. They were wrong, apparently. These kids are way too smart.

“New rule: no talking about _anyone's_ bums in public,” Cara states, cheeks warming up a little, not in embarrassment, but arousal. She knows how she and Din are going to tease each other about this, tonight. Now that he's back, if they're lucky, the children will finally stay in their bedroom and sleep through the whole night, leaving the two of them some much needed time alone together.

“I don't like this rule,” grumbles Shari in that frustrated tone she always uses when she wants to complain about something even though she knows she'll have to obey.

Din ruffles her hair indulgently.

“You don't like _any_ rule.”

Cara meets his look and they share a grin that doesn't need any words.

They all help Din take off his armour and while he's in the shower, Shari and Vodi clean his armour from the dirt. Cara watches from the kitchen as she warms up on the stove one of the meals Din cooked and froze before leaving. She cooks only if she has no other choice, but the children always complain about _her_ meals. She prefers chopping wood to cooking, anyway.

When Din gets out of the shower, Cara meets him in the main room, where Shari and Vodi have fallen asleep on the carpet among the scattered pieces of the armour. In her floating pram, the one that used to be Vodi's, Tahti is sound asleep, too.

Cara quirks a brow at Din, letting an appreciative look linger up and down his half naked body before crossing her arms and glancing down at the kids.

“I guess we'll be putting off the painting to tomorrow.”

Din moves behind her to fold his arms around her waist and nuzzle his face into the crook of her neck. His lips touch her skin and glide upward, to the sensitive spot below her ear.

“Leave them here,” he mutters in a husky, suggestive voice that gives Cara a very precise idea of what his intentions are. “Dinner can wait another hour.”

“Aren't you tired?” she asks, even though she knows he needs to feel her as desperately as she needs to feel him. They can never stay away from each other this long and keep their cool for long at his return.

Din slides his hands over her hips with a tantalizing caress. “I'm never too tired for you.”

Cara turns in his embrace and hops as he pulls her up, locking her legs around his hips.

“Let's go, my _Cyare Verd,”_ she whispers in between a kiss and another. “Before the sleepy pride awakens.”

Din smirks against her lips, his hands squeezing her bottom to press her closer to his hardening crotch as he carries her to the bedroom. He presses her back to the door to close it, kissing her shoulder, her pulse.

“I missed you so much,” he groans against her skin.

Cara runs her hands through his wet hair.

“Prove it,” she challenges, and just as she says that the towel around Din's waist falls to the floor, allowing Cara to get a very direct feeling of just how much he _missed_ her.

He laughs into her neck when she lets out a hungry moan.

“That enough?”

She grins, and laughs, and giggles, as they sink into the mattress and roll over, kissing haphazardly like horny teenagers.

“Yeah,” she pants. She feels so stupidly happy she just can't stop smiling, even after his hands venture under her shirt, taking her breath away. They have a weird domesticity, a weird family life, but she can't imagine living any other way.

All of this is hers: this house they built with their own hands, these insanely beautiful, smart children, this man she has the privilege to call her husband. The Mandalorian with flowers and chubby little hands printed in bright colours all over his armour.

“Good enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be utter family fluff but at the end Din and Cara took the wheel, as always, and the sexy times slipped in. They're hopeless, I swear.
> 
> After this I hope I'll be able to finish the fic with Paz, and after that there might be an entirely new story involving CaraDin, Paz, _and_ Selva. Because more than one person screamed OT4 and now I kinda can't stop thinking about it. Oh, well.
> 
> As usual, comments = love. We all need virtual hugs. ❤


End file.
